By JONATHAN WEISMAN Newt Gingrich built a reputation for playing partisan hardball during his quest to bring Republicans a House majority. But before the 1994 Republican Revolution, the future House speaker teamed with some of the most prominent Democrats of his time to build a legislative record that carried a bipartisan cast.

Before the 1994 Republican Revolution, Newt Gingrich teamed with Democratics to back the Endangered Species Act and American Heritage Trust Act. As Joanthan Weisman explains on The News Hub, those positions are causing him trouble today. He teamed with Democrats to back amendments to the Endangered Species Act. He co-sponsored then-Rep. Patricia Schroeder's Violence Against Women Act, which toughened laws against domestic violence, and he pushed for Rep. Morris Udall's plan to spend $1 billion a year on federal land acquisitions.

Mr. Gingrich joined Rep. Charles Rangel to press for the Low Income Housing Credit Act over the objections of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp, a Republican. And he was one of only a handful of GOP co-sponsors for a water quality bill in 1987 that was vetoed by President Ronald Reagan as a "budget buster."

Associated Press

Newt Gingrich, then a GOP minority whip, on the Capitol steps in 1990..Gingrich campaign officials didn't return requests for comment on the candidate's current positions on the legislation.

Mr. Gingrich's record was, in part, a sign of the times: Bipartisanship was common, and Republicans—seemingly stuck in a permanent minority—had to team with Democrats to pass anything. Gingrich aides and allies say his record also points to areas where he strived for compromise, especially on the environment—positions that could help him appeal to independents should he win the GOP nomination for president.

For now, though, some of those bills are causing Mr. Gingrich trouble among conservatives. Last week, at a private meeting with conservative leaders in Northern Virginia, Mr. Gingrich was pushed especially hard on his support of the Endangered Species Act, which conservatives view as an attack on private property rights.

The Violence Against Women Act, which passed the House unanimously when Mr. Gingrich joined 225 lawmakers as a co-sponsor, today is denounced by the conservative Concerned Women for America as "a big government boondoggle" that "provides a federal trough at which leftist activist organizations feed." The law provided grants for law enforcement efforts to prosecute and prevent crimes such as rape, and made interstate stalking a federal crime.

In the Running Read more about the president and the GOP hopefuls

.."Newt has always been improperly described as more or less a conservative ideologue, and that's never been the case," said Vin Weber, who served with Mr. Gingrich in the House but is a senior adviser to GOP candidate Mitt Romney. "He's certainly a right of center guy, but to pin him down ideologically is more difficult than the current campaign would have you believe."

On Wednesday, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney released an Internet video pressing his charge that Mr. Gingrich is an "unreliable leader."

But most Republican voters aren't buying the challenge to Mr. Gingrich's conservative credentials. In a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Tuesday, 57% of GOP primary voters identified him as conservative; 28% called him a moderate. Mr. Romney was identified as conservative by 29% of GOP primary voters.

"Conservatives have worked with Newt Gingrich for three decades. To go out and try to define Newt Gingrich as anything other than a conservative is a fool's errand," said Robert Walker, a senior adviser who served with him in the House.

Mr. Gingrich signed his name to dozens of Democratic bills during his 20 years in the House, most of them non-ideological and non-partisan. But some were signature pieces of liberal policy-making. Vice President Joe Biden still points to the Violence Against Women Act of 1993 as one of his proudest accomplishments as a senator.

In 1993, Mr. Gingrich backed an extension of the Endangered Species Act, written by then-Rep. Gerry Studds of Massachusetts. It would have protected species that may become endangered in the future and offered private landowners incentives to help preserve species.

Louisiana Rep. Bill Tauzin, a conservative Democrat who would switch parties after the 1994 election, drafted an alternative that would require compensation for impacted landowners. His version attracted the co-sponsorship of most of Mr. Gingrich's colleagues in the House GOP leadership. The Studds bill died after the 1994 election.

Journal Community ..In 1989, Mr. Gingrich backed the American Heritage Trust Act, sponsored by Mr. Udall, which would have slowly built up a $30 billion trust whose interest would be used for federal land acquisition. Republicans that May stormed out of a committee session to draft the bill after their amendments were rejected en masse.

That same year, Mr. Gingrich signed on to the Stratospheric Ozone Protection Act, joining Sen. Al Gore on an effort to control ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons. President George H.W. Bush would later mock Mr. Gore as "Ozone Man."

"The Democratic margin was such that partisanship and screaming and hollering wasn't going to get you anywhere," said Tom Bliley, a senior House Republican in the 1980s and 1990s. But both he and Mr. Walker said Mr. Gingrich was less conservative than many of his colleagues on environmental issues. "I would say he has a soft spot on issues of the environment," Mr. Walker said.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D., Ore.) recalled working with Mr. Gingrich in 1989 on the Global Warming Prevention Act, at the same time Mr. Gingrich was pounding House Speaker Jim Wright for alleged ethical transgressions. Mr. Wright resigned that year. "He was a little bipolar," Mr. DeFazio said.

Newt Gingrich's opponents aren't letting up in their criticism of his lucrative ties to the failed mortgage giant Freddie Mac after he resigned as House Speaker in the late 1990s. More damaging to his Presidential candidacy is that Mr. Gingrich doesn't seem to understand why anyone is offended.

In his first response after news broke that he'd made $300,000 working for Freddie, Mr. Gingrich claimed he had "offered them advice on precisely what they didn't do." As a "historian," he said during a November 9 debate, he had concluded last decade that "this is a bubble," and that Freddie and its sister Fannie Mae should stop making loans to people who have no credit history. He added that now they should be broken up.

A week later Bloomberg reported that Mr. Gingrich had made between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in two separate contracts with Freddie between 1999 and 2008. The former Speaker stuck to his line that "I was approached to offer strategic advice" and had warned the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) to stop lending to bad credit risks.

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Republican Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich.Then on December 2 our colleagues at the Journal reported that as late as April 2007 Mr. Gingrich had defended Fannie and Freddie as examples of conservative governance. "While we need to improve the regulation of the GSEs, I would be very cautious about fundamentally changing their role or the model itself," Mr. Gingrich said in an interview at the time.

Mr. Gingrich added in that interview that there are times "when you need government to help spur private enterprise and economic development." He cited electricity and telephone network expansion. "It's not a point of view libertarians would embrace, but I am more in the Alexander Hamilton-Teddy Roosevelt tradition of conservatism," he said, adding "I'm convinced that if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today."

Related Video Dan Henninger on Thursday's GOP presidential debate in Iowa...Where to begin? One problem is the lack of candor. In Thursday's Sioux City debate, Mr. Gingrich repeated his claim that he had never done a favor for Fan and Fred. But as Speaker in 1995, according to news reports at the time, Mr. Gingrich helped to kill an effort by then House Budget Chairman John Kasich to impose user fees on Fannie and Freddie. The fees were intended to offset the cost advantage provided to the companies by their implicit government guarantee.

Mr. Gingrich also knows that many Republicans were fighting against furious opposition, and at great political risk, to reform Fan and Fred in the early and mid-2000s. The heroes included then Congressman Richard Baker, Senator Richard Shelby and Bush White House aide Kevin Warsh. We were at the barricades too, and Mr. Gingrich was never seen in the rear of the reform camp, much less on the front lines. The Georgian could only have been on the payroll because Freddie thought he could help influence other Republicans against reform.

As for the destructive duo's business model that Mr. Gingrich said he didn't want to change, this was precisely their problem. Far from a private-public partnership, they were private companies with a federal guarantee against failure. Their model was private profit but socialized risk. This produced riches on Wall Street and for company executives. But taxpayers bore the risk of loss—to the tune of $141 billion so far. Why does the historian think they were called "government-sponsored enterprises"?

The real history lesson here may be what the Freddie episode reveals about Mr. Gingrich's political philosophy. To wit, he has a soft spot for big government when he can use it for his own political ends. He also supported the individual mandate in health care in the 1990s, and we recall when he lobbied us to endorse the prescription drug benefit with only token Medicare reform in 2003.

As late as Thursday night's debate, Mr. Gingrich was still defending his Freddie ties as a way of "helping people buy houses." But that is the same excuse Barney Frank used to block reform, and the political pursuit of making housing affordable is what led Freddie to guarantee loans to so many borrowers who couldn't repay them. Yesterday's SEC lawsuit against former Fannie and Freddie executives for misleading investors about subprime-mortgage risks only reinforces the point.

***If Americans elect a Republican in 2012, it will be someone who can make the case for reviving economic growth, but also for restraining and reforming government so it doesn't bankrupt the country. If Americans want more "bold" government experiments, they'll re-elect Barack Obama.

Mr. Gingrich would help his candidacy if he stopped defending his Freddie payday, admitted his mistake, and promised to atone as President by shrinking Fannie and Freddie and ultimately putting them out of business.

WASHINGTON — Newt Gingrich arrived in Washington in January 1979 as a brash congressman dreaming of a Republican revival. Not quite four years later, frustrated at the pace of change, he quietly sought counsel from a man he had once worked to defeat: Richard M. Nixon. Mr. Gingrich entered national politics in his party’s liberal wing; as a young graduate student in 1968, he campaigned for Nixon’s opponent, Nelson A. Rockefeller. Now, over a dinner in New York, the disgraced former president instructed the impatient lawmaker to build a coalition — the noisier the better. “He said, ‘You cannot change the country unless you are interesting and attract attention,’ ” Mr. Gingrich recalled in a speech years later. “And to do that, you have to have a group.” Mr. Gingrich promptly founded the Conservative Opportunity Society, a band of activist lawmakers who helped usher in the 1994 Republican revolution that made him his party’s first House speaker in 40 years. But many of the conservatives who rode to power with Mr. Gingrich ultimately deserted him, while he denounced them as “petty dictators” and “the perfectionist caucus” in the waning days of his tumultuous four-year speakership. Today as he seeks the Republican nomination for president, Mr. Gingrich, 68, remains a paradoxical figure for conservatives to embrace — a man who can “bring us together, and alienate the hell out of us,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who as a House member tried to oust Mr. Gingrich in an unsuccessful 1997 coup. Many credit him with advancing their cause, yet many are deeply suspicious of him. A look at Mr. Gingrich’s earliest days in politics, and the evolution of his thinking, helps explain the rocky relationship between Mr. Gingrich and the movement he once led. He emerges as more of a pragmatist than a purist, a believer in “activist government” whose raw ambition made colleagues uneasy, provoking questions about whether he was motivated by conservative ideals, personal advancement — or both. On the campaign trail, Mr. Gingrich calls himself the “conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.” As he seeks to appeal to Tea Party voters, he often invokes a conservative icon, Ronald Reagan. But some say he more closely resembles another Republican president. “Gingrich is more Nixonian than he is Reaganite,” said Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman and the first chairman of the Conservative Opportunity Society, who is on good terms with Mr. Gingrich but supports Mr. Romney. “Not in the Watergate sense, in the strategic sense. He is not an ideologue.” A Man With a Plan From the moment he entered politics, Newt Gingrich was a man with a plan to remake the Republican Party — with himself at the top. He made little secret of his ambitions when, as a 25-year-old graduate student at Tulane University in New Orleans, he signed on with the 1968 Rockefeller campaign. One night, the man who would go on to describe himself as a “transformative figure” and “definer of civilization” stunned fellow volunteers by telling them he thought he could one day be president. “He was very into himself,” said Kit Wisdom, a leader of the Rockefeller Louisiana campaign, “and in charge of everything.” His political philosophy was “in the middle,” Ms. Wisdom said. He was antitax, and hawkish on defense, but a strong environmentalist and advocate of civil rights. He courted black supporters and later told his biographer, Mel Steely, that he felt “a moral obligation to support the candidate who was intensely for integration.” But while he may have felt a moral obligation, Mr. Gingrich also saw political opportunity as a Republican in a South dominated by conservative Democrats. He believed the future of the party in the South was to be “the moderate, progressive alternative to the old-line Dixiecrats,” Mr. Weber said. And he saw a chance to move quickly up the party ranks. He made his first bid for office in 1974, while a history professor at West Georgia College, now the University of West Georgia, by challenging Representative John J. Flynt Jr., a conservative Democrat. Mr. Gingrich knew he could not “out-conservative” Mr. Flynt, one former aide recalled. So he sought to paint his opponent as corrupt, a tactic he would later use against Democrats like the House Speaker Jim Wright. He lost that year, and again to Mr. Flynt in 1976. But two years later, when the seat opened up, Mr. Gingrich tacked right, ran on a traditional antitax Republican platform and won. His disdain for the Republican leadership was evident; in a speech to College Republicans that year, he railed against Nixon and Gerald R. Ford for their failure to build a majority. “They have done a terrible job, a pathetic job,” Mr. Gingrich thundered, unaware that his words were being recorded. “In my lifetime, literally in my lifetime — I was born in 1943 — we have not had a competent national Republican leader. Not ever!” Mr. Gingrich went on: “I think that one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the campfire, but are lousy in politics.” Ideas, Yes. Theories, No. In Washington, Mr. Gingrich quickly became known as an ideas man. He aligned himself with Jack Kemp, the New York congressman whose advocacy of tax cuts and civil rights fit with Mr. Gingrich’s own brand of Republicanism, and he backed Reagan in 1980. Even so, Mr. Gingrich’s ideas made some in his own party nervous. In 1979, his first year in office, Mr. Gingrich was among a handful of freshman Republicans to vote to create the federal Department of Education, a vote that many conservatives, who want to abolish the department, still hold against him. (Today Mr. Gingrich says he wants to “dramatically shrink” the agency.) Ever the history professor, he gave long, meandering speeches on the House floor, calling himself a “Teddy Roosevelt Republican” and extolling the virtues of “activist government.” When President Jimmy Carter proposed an Alaskan wildlife reserve, Mr. Gingrich voted in favor, breaking with his party. His support for more federal investment in transportation, science, space programs and technology rattled libertarians and free market conservatives; the Club for Growth, an advocacy group, complains that Mr. Gingrich has “a recurring impulse to insert the government in the private economy.” In a 1984 interview with Mother Jones Magazine, Mr. Gingrich was unapologetic. “I believe in a lean bureaucracy,” he said, “but not no bureaucracy.” In intellectual circles, Mr. Gingrich raised eyebrows; he drew inspiration not from theorists like Edmund Burke and Friedrich Hayek, but from futurists like Isaac Asimov and Alvin Toffler. “I call Newt an experiential conservative, as opposed to a deeply philosophical conservative,” Paul M. Weyrich, a conservative activist, once told the PBS program Frontline. “He does not have a deeply held philosophy, say, biblically based philosophy as some of us do.” The culture wars that energized Christian conservatives held little interest for the new congressman from Georgia. “Newt’s basic inclination is to let people be people — if it’s not against the law then it’s none of our business,” said Mr. Steely, who taught history alongside Mr. Gingrich and later worked in his Congressional office. Over time, Mr. Gingrich would develop what his campaign now calls “a consistent pro-life record” on abortion. But early in his career, when his aides pressed him to take a position, he resisted, said Steven M. Gillon, a University of Oklahoma historian who examined Mr. Gingrich’s Congressional papers while researching a book, “The Pact.” “I would never vote against my conscience,” the book quotes Mr. Gingrich as telling his staff in 1983. “On the other hand, I also make it a habit to have relatively few things I feel bitterly moral about.” The year 1982 was dismal for Republicans; with unemployment topping 10 percent, the party lost 26 seats in the midterm elections. Mr. Gingrich feared the Reagan revolution was slipping away, and along with it his dreams of building a Republican majority — and becoming speaker. He had already spent considerable time trying. In 1980, Mr. Gingrich staged an event on the steps of the Capitol for Republicans to publicly commit to a “G.O.P. National Contract” that pledged tax and spending cuts, much like the Contract With America later would in 1994. He wanted a national strategy for Republicans, a novel thought at the time. But the event gained little traction. Mr. Gillon, the University of Oklahoma historian, sees Mr. Gingrich during this period as going through a kind of “identity crisis, looking for some way that he could emerge from the pack.” His dinner with Nixon in the fall of 1982 was an attempt to do just that. Even in exile, the former president remained a savvy political observer and kept in touch with Republicans in Washington. That night, the two men spent three hours together, along with Mr. Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne. (They met again in Washington in 1984 when Mr. Gingrich arranged for Nixon to talk about policy with House Republican freshmen.) Mr. Gingrich later recounted the New York dinner in his book “Lessons Learned the Hard Way.” “I told him I thought the Republicans at long last ought to become the majority in the House,” Mr. Gingrich wrote. “He shook his head and said that the House Republican Party had little impact and received little attention from the press because it was so boring.” Back in Washington, Mr. Gingrich asked a Republican pollster, Robert Teeter, to test public reaction to the phrases “conservative opportunity state” and “liberal welfare state,” said Frank Gregorsky, then Mr. Gingrich’s chief of staff. The responses came back three to one in favor of the first. Mr. Gregorsky remembers his boss as ecstatic, convinced he had found a winning formula. “The essence of Newt,” Mr. Gregorsky said, “is that he’s a marketing genius. He’s not a philosopher or an ideologue.” For Mr. Gingrich, it was an important turning point. He quickly began recruiting members for his new “Conservative Opportunity Society” — he later called the group a “direct descendant of Richard Nixon’s advice” — and put together a companion coalition of like-minded outside activists. They met every Wednesday to plot strategy. Participants remember him as a man in motion, always searching for the perfect catchphrase or issue for Republicans to exploit. “He was constantly probing with bayonets,” said Grover Norquist, the antitax advocate, who attended those sessions, “constantly trying to figure out what would work.” Over the next decade, Mr. Gingrich established himself as a partisan firebrand and the undisputed leader of a bold new conservative movement. “Conservatives liked him because he was so bombastic, so willing to take on the liberals,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist and former Capitol Hill aide. But some had nagging suspicions, Mr. Feehery said, that Mr. Gingrich was “more moderate personally than he lets on.” His fascination with tactics, his past as a Rockefeller Republican and his grandiose statements bred mistrust. Some wondered if he was interested in advancing conservative ideals, or his own political future. “I have an enormous personal ambition,” he told The Washington Post in 1985. “I want to shift the entire planet. And I’m doing it.” ‘The Ultimate Pragmatist’ Page 4 of 4) Nearly a decade later, on the morning after election night 1994, the soon-to-be House speaker could barely contain himself. He vowed to stamp out the “Great Society, counterculture McGovernick” legacy of Democrats and to put his own conservative imprint on American society. The Long RunThe House YearsArticles in this series are exploring the lives and careers of the candidates for president in 2012.Nixon, who died earlier that year, did not live to see his unlikely protégé’s triumph. But he approved of Mr. Gingrich’s fiery tactics, according the book “Nixon Off the Record,” by Monica Crowley, the conservative commentator and onetime Nixon research assistant. “He’s a bomb-thrower — and we need him,” Ms. Crowley quoted the former president as saying. Yet for all his relentless promotion of the right, Mr. Gingrich had also demonstrated his cool calculus in his climb to the top. In 1989, in a hard-fought race for Republican whip, Mr. Gingrich challenged Ed Madigan, who had the backing of another prominent conservative, Tom DeLay, the future Republican leader. Sherwood L. Boehlert, a moderate Republican from upstate New York who is now retired, remembers Mr. Gingrich courting moderates, and promising them a role in leadership if he won. He did, by two votes. “I always thought of Gingrich as darn near the ultimate pragmatist,” Mr. Boehlert said. Those close ties with moderates, and Mr. Gingrich’s willingness to compromise with President Bill Clinton, ultimately caused him trouble with his party’s right flank, especially the zealous revolutionaries he brought to Washington — a group much like the Tea Party lawmakers of today. Many found him dismissive and condescending, and viewed his management style as chaotic. “Gingrich talked a lot about the importance of listening, but he was often not interested in discussing our ideas,” one member of the freshman class of 1994, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, now a senator, later wrote in a book about his years in Washington, “Breach of Trust.” Beyond complaints about style, there were issues of substance. Within Mr. Gingrich’s fractious Republican caucus, deficit hawks repeatedly accused him of abandoning their top priority, cutting federal spending. His decision to end the government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996 proved a particular sore point; conservatives said Mr. Gingrich had caved in to a White House that outmaneuvered him. “He was like a whipped dog who barked, yet still cowered, in Mr. Clinton’s presence,” Mr. Coburn wrote. In 1997, Mr. Gingrich proposed backing away from a promise he had made in the Contract With America to cut spending on Congressional committees by one third. He said the money was necessary for Congressional oversight of the White House. The rebellious lawmakers balked. Some, including Mr. Graham and Joe Scarborough, now an MSNBC host, demanded that Mr. Gingrich stick to the contract — or step down. “Newt’s never been a conservative,” Mr. Scarborough said. “He is an opportunist.” On the campaign trail, Mr. Gingrich has said the notion that he is not conservative is “laughable.” (The American Conservative Union, an advocacy group, says that during his two decades in Congress Mr. Gingrich voted conservative 90 percent of the time.) His defenders say he was simply engaged in the difficult, sometimes messy, business of governing. “The reality is that Newt was trying to hold together a very close majority,” said Bob Walker, a former Republican congressman who remains a close ally of Mr. Gingrich, “and that meant sometimes you had to do things that were popular across the whole conference, and not just the things that a handful of conservatives wanted.” But by November 1998, when Republicans lost five seats in the midterm elections, House conservatives were threatening to vote against Mr. Gingrich’s re-election as speaker. Concluding that he had become too polarizing to lead, he announced he would quit the speakership, and Congress. In his headier moments, Mr. Gingrich had boldly proclaimed himself “the most serious, systematic revolutionary of modern times.” Now, in his final days on Capitol Hill, he sounded bitter. On the day he announced his resignation from Congress, Mr. Gingrich convened a conference call with fellow Republicans. In it, the leader of the 1994 conservative rebellion blamed the conservatives he had brought to power for his political fall. “Cannibals,” Mr. Gingrich called them.

From Constitutional Issues, Crafty wrote: "I get that there is serious legal discussion to be had here, and I very much like that Newt had the courage to go into a deep and difficult issue. What I'm not so sure what I like is the possible lack of judgment in doing so. Is this really the sort of issue for a presidential to raise now essentially out of the clear blue as far as the American people are concerned? Does he not appreciate how dangerous this subject is and how easy it is for him to be painted in a terrible light?"

True. He is showing off his knowledge of history, empowering opponents and scaring us with his drift, instead of narrowing his focus.

Reagan had only 3 things IIRC that he could not be pulled away from, reducing tax rates to grow the economy, increasing defense spending to win the cold war and reigning in the size and scope of big government. Just 3 things and he only succeeded at two of them.

Some great posts with good insight into Gingrich on this board. Thanks to all.

He certainly does sound like he is more akin to TR, Nixon, even FDR.

This comment, "More damaging to his Presidential candidacy is that Mr. Gingrich doesn't seem to understand why anyone is offended."

couple this with his statement the other day saying something about America is fed up with "the Washington establishment" is enough for me. I heard him say that and all I could think of is what a hypocrit - reminds me too much of CLinton hypocracy and deceit.

It really is astounding to hear so many Republicans come out in full force against him. Even people who are playing it safe and not speaking negatively publically, are trashing him by their silence and their patent refusal to endorse him.

I am not clear that any big names on the Repub side are for him. Has anyone heard a single prominent Repub leader come out and forcefully speak up for him - other than maybe John Bolten (who might be his secretary of state)?

I am shocked at how disliked he appears to be by anyone and everyone who knows him well.

I for one cannot ignore this. AS long as Romney can keep coming out swinging and show me he is in for the fight of this countyr's life - he is my man. I am almost there.

This video of him praising FDR like he does - that's almost it for me.

Given the low regard in which I hold the Republican leadership for me it does not count against Newt that many/most of them are not for him. Indeed for me in many cases it counts as a badge of honor.

Unlike most of them, Newt's actual real world accomplishments are quite substantial:

a) engineering the first Rep takeover of the House in over 40 years and ARRIVING WITH A MANDATEb) reforming "welfare as we know it" with a Dem Senate and Presidentc) major capital gains tax rate cutd) budgetary surplus for 4 years

Anyone think Boener, the current leader of the House could do this? Or is he leading the Reps to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

Please be clear, I address ONLY the point concerning his lack of support from the Wash. establishment.

"I address ONLY the point concerning his lack of support from the Wash. establishment."

Am I incorrect in noting that almost no prominent Rep has come out in big support of Newt?Perhaps I have simply missed this or the MSM is NOT reporting it. No surprise there.

If this is the case than this a real eye opener. I mean even people who have worked closely with him will not speak up for him?

I also am not sure of what to make of his comment months back about Republicans must stop their social engineering. Remember this and he caught flack? I know exactly what he is talking about and so do the repubs who bashed him. Yet seeing tapes of him complimenting and even perhaps emulating TR FDR and Nixon certainly suggests he is not historically for ending Rep engineering. Indeed Scarbroough who I dislike maybe did have a point when he stated the reason the repubs got rid of Newt wasn't the gov. shutdown or the marital affairs but that he wasn't conservative enough!

I say this while recognizing that Scarborough sits every day agreeing with socialists for his TV show.

By CURT LEVEY 'Gingrich would arrest judges," scream the headlines. You'd think he'd proposed some crazy, unconstitutional crackdown on federal judges. Instead, Newt Gingrich's position paper, "Bringing the Courts Back Under the Constitution," has a set of controversial but thoughtful proposals for reining in judicial activism.

These include calling judges before Congress to explain their decisions, impeaching judges or eliminating courts that consistently get the Constitution wrong, and limiting the applicability of Supreme Court decisions that distort the Constitution. They've been dismissed as violations of the Constitution's separation of powers. The criticisms are overblown. All are constitutional if carefully implemented and constrained to the appropriate circumstances.

For example, Congress routinely asks executive branch officials outside the White House to testify about their decisions. It occasionally subpoenas them to compel attendance, and arrest would be a last resort. It's unclear why applying the same rules to the judicial branch threatens the separation of powers, especially if done in the context of considering judicial reform proposals like Mr. Gingrich's. Subpoenaing Justices of the Supreme Court, the only court created by the Constitution, is a possible exception.

Mr. Gingrich discusses the possibility of abolishing individual judgeships or lower federal courts, while acknowledging that this would be "warranted only in the most extreme of circumstances." The Constitution gives Congress the authority to "ordain and establish" lower courts. That includes the power to eliminate courts and judgeships, as Congress has occasionally done. Nonetheless, Mr. Gingrich concedes that "Other constitutional options, including impeachment, are better suited in most circumstances to check and balance the judiciary." Stubborn disregard for the Constitution falls short of the "good behavior" required of judges and may justify impeachment.

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Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich.Another controversial proposal: limiting the applicability of Supreme Court decisions. Mr. Gingrich proposes what Abraham Lincoln outlined in his First Inaugural Address, that "in certain circumstances, the holdings of Supreme Court decisions should be limited to the litigants in a case, and not be held to apply as a general controlling standard." Accordingly, Lincoln refused to treat the high court's Dred Scott decision—now recognized as outrageous judicial activism—as binding on the executive branch. If Lincoln's position seems extreme today, it only reinforces Mr. Gingrich's point that the balance of power has shifted too much toward the judiciary.

Like any plan designed to adjust the constitutional balance of power, Mr. Gingrich's ideas for judicial reform raise a variety of intriguing constitutional questions. Though his freewheeling style adds to the focus on such questions, we should not lose sight of the plan's valuable contribution to the debate on the courts.

Among those contributions is a clear identification of the problem: "The power of the American judiciary has increased exponentially at the expense of elected representatives" such that "the Supreme Court has become a permanent constitutional convention." Mr. Gingrich understands that "judicial supremacy only survives due to the passivity of the executive and legislative branches." He acknowledges the importance of an independent judiciary but points out that "judicial independence does not mean . . . judges can never be held accountable for their judgments . . . however extreme and unfounded."

Instead, Mr. Gingrich argues that the other two branches have the power and the obligation to push back. "The President and each member of Congress takes an oath to defend the Constitution," he notes; "if they believe that the judicial branch is acting contrary to the Constitution, then they have an obligation . . . to check and balance the judicial branch."

There's always the risk of overreach. But unlike the judiciary, democratic constraints provide a check. Even the popular FDR couldn't get a heavily Democratic Congress to approve his court-packing scheme.

Mr. Gingrich doesn't pretend to have all the answers. Instead he offers several possible ways to push back while acknowledging that the best remedy for judicial activism is a president and Senate that will nominate and confirm constitutionalist judges. Beyond that, he describes his specific proposals as "constitutional steps that the legislative and executive branches . . . can take to check and balance the judiciary" (emphasis added), noting that "these powers should be used sparingly." His goals are modest; he hopes to begin "a national conversation" about "formulating executive orders and legislative proposals that will establish a constitutional framework for reining in lawless judges."

While it's easy to criticize anyone who sticks his neck out with specific reform proposals, the alternative is to allow the federal courts to remain unaccountable. Mr. Gingrich's ideas deserve serious consideration, warts and all.

Mr. Levey, an attorney, is executive director of the Committee for Justice

It is nearly caucus time, and Newt Gingrich has found his closing argument. The question is whether it comes soon enough to save his campaign.

Mr. Gingrich rolled into this state on Tuesday with a new focus on pro-growth economic policies and a new determination to sharply contrast his proposals with those of his main rival for the nomination, Mitt Romney. On his first stop here on his final Iowa bus tour, Mr. Gingrich went straight to the mat. Voters face a choice, between "a supply-sider in the [Jack] Kemp-Reagan tradition," and "the philosophy of a moderate Massachusetts governor" who "said he did not want to go back to the Reagan-Bush years."

This pro-growth mantra isn't just strategy, it's necessity. The Gingrich surge has been checked by a barrage of negative campaign ads from his rivals, reminding voters of the former speaker's ties to Freddie Mac, his checkered Washington tenure, his marital baggage. Lacking the money or organization to respond, the campaign has drifted down in the polls, raising the distinct possibility that Mr. Gingrich could end up in a lackluster fourth place.

Mr. Gingrich is betting his new economic theme will be a winner, and he has grounds to think so. The voters in this state have heard every candidate promise the same things: They'll slash government spending, kill ObamaCare, rein in the Environmental Protection Agency. This has become a baseline for conservatives—they expect as much. What they are aching to hear is a bold, positive plan for how to reverse the ravages of Obamanomics.

That thirst was behind the rise of Herman Cain and his 9-9-9 plan, and for a while the pizza maven kept the other candidates on their pro-growth toes. But with his departure, the economic theme has lost some prominence. Mr. Gingrich is looking to re-jump-start his campaign as the growth guy.

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Newt Gingrich campaigns in Iowa, Dec. 28..And so here in this city, and across Iowa, Mr. Gingrich spent the week laying out his reform agenda. He riffed on his plans to eliminate the capital gains tax, to give voters an optional 15% flat tax, to cut the corporate tax rate to 12.5%, to axe the death tax. The campaign is plowing money into ads highlighting his economic plan and blasting out emails comparing it to Mr. Romney's. Mr. Gingrich is also touting an endorsement by supply-sider Art Laffer and telling voters he'd staff his cabinet with pro-growth adherents like Steve Forbes.

The Gingrich strategy—in addition to ginning up voter enthusiasm—is to drill into Mr. Romney's soft spot. The former speaker's "problem with Mr. Romney," he kept noting, is the former Massachusetts governor's timidity on tax policy. Mr. Romney has been cautious, shying from a flat tax, promising only to extend the Bush tax cuts, and offering a relatively small corporate tax cut (to 25% from 35%). His determination to be the champion of the "middle class" has also led to economically confused proposals, such as eliminating capital gains tax only for those making under $200,000 a year.

Mr. Gingrich's goal is also to make the case that the Republican nominee with the strongest economic proposals is the Republican nominee best positioned to take on Mr. Obama. He's correctly arguing that this election is going to be won or lost on contrasts, and that there will be no greater flashpoint with Mr. Obama than on economic policy.

Judging by the audience reaction, the voters were listening—though they'd have been listening more when Mr. Gingrich was still on top. In the intervening weeks, the pounding Mr. Gingrich has received at the hands of rivals has entered the public consciousness. It was notable that few of the voters at the Gingrich events were committed supporters. Most were folks who wanted to see if the candidate could overcome the doubts they'd developed about his temperament and past jobs and political positions.

And while many liked the economic theme, they left with those doubts still top of mind. "There's just so much baggage," says Mike Bertling, a small business owner who came out to hear Mr. Gingrich speak at the National Farm Toy Museum in Dyersville. "How do you get past that?"

There's also Mr. Gingrich's tendency to wander off subject—as he did frequently this week—raising questions about his ability to drive home his economic pitch. And there's the odd way he's packaging his message, arguing that his supply-side credentials stem from his time as speaker of the House. While many conservatives may remember the 1990s as a time of relative prosperity, the allusions also remind them of those things they didn't like about Mr. Gingrich—from government shutdowns to ethics allegations.

The Gingrich team is playing down expectations for Iowa, stressing the long game. It's betting that Mr. Romney will retain a ceiling on his support, and that Mr. Gingrich's economic message will help him to consolidate a majority as other candidates drop out. It's looking to South Carolina, and in particular to the late-January primary in Florida, where Mr. Gingrich has been focusing his efforts.

Yet Mr. Romney has been rising in the Iowa polls, and a victory here, followed by a smashing win in his stomping grounds of New Hampshire, could set him on an inexorable path to victory. Mr. Gingrich is making a winning last pro-growth stand, though it may come too late to capture the nomination.

"I have been reminded in recent days just how tepid and timid Romney's economic plans are."

Again the radical left has won the argument. When they are not in full power they are able to shift the argument with a complicit MSM to the Republicans, the Tea party types are out simply to shut down government and block ANYthing Brock does.

We NEVER hear this when we had a minority party in the Senate fillibustering everything and doing the same thing.

Unfortunately it does appear the Independents buy into this hook line and sinker particularly all of those on the gov. paycheck dole whose sole reason de tere is to get that check. At least that is the impression I am left with when everytime I hear a poll result the Repubs are held to blame MORE than the Crats or WH for the inability of the gov to "govern".

An unfortunately Romney is all about compromise and getting things done. Total establishment. Yet this appears to garner the most votes in a national election -

I don't recall if it was Cantor or Santorum who recently was on cable stating the truth that we cannot compromise - we have done so for decades and the left still does not will not stop the progressive march.

Either Romney doesn't believe this or he is doing what he thinks he has to - I am not sure. Either way I fear he may be right. It probably is too late.

IIRC that was the reason his original staff left him for , , , Rick Perry.

At present, the four players are Mitt, Newt, Santorum, and Ron Paul.

Mitt: Too tepid, too timid, to used to being bullied by Democrats;

Santorum: While I am comfortable around social conservatism, I think many independents will find RS concerning on these issues and Baraq will whip his folks into a frenzy over them. He certainly seems to be a big government conservative. And, no way can he beat Baraq;

RP: As previously discussed-- absolutely great on economics, spending, taxes, freedom, the Fed, but devastating on foreign affairs. The left will join him in cutting the military, then hang him out to dry over entitlements;

Newt: Flawed as he may be, for his great strengths I go with Newt. He needs the money now or else he will be too badly wounded by the time South Carolina arrives and by default we will have Romney.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Newt Gingrich may not have much money to spend on advertising here. But he does have Joseph W. McQuaid, the publisher of New Hampshire’s largest newspaper, The Union Leader. And Mr. McQuaid will happily spill barrel after barrel of ink trying to tear every other candidate down. “Our job is to say, ‘Here’s our guy. Here’s why he’s the best, and why all the others are the worst,’ ” Mr. McQuaid said in a recent interview. He had just finished a front-page editorial for Sunday’s paper that ripped into Mitt Romney, who leads Mr. Gingrich by double digits in the polls. “Romney may be the WORST candidate,” he wrote. “There’s no reason to be subtle,” Mr. McQuaid said. Subtle is not how many people would describe The Union Leader or Mr. McQuaid. Mr. Romney is “plastic” and “desperate,” he said. Ron Paul is a dangerous elf from the “Island of Misfit Toys.” And Rick Santorum? “Is he running for something?” Mr. McQuaid said, flashing an impish grin. Mr. McQuaid and his newspaper are the Siberian tigers of political journalism: ferocious and endangered. At a time when editorials and newspapers themselves are playing a smaller role in American politics, the brash and biting Union Leader still commands the attention and respect of the country’s most prominent politicians. Every four years, they flatter and pay homage to the newspaper in hope that they can secure what remains one of the most coveted endorsements of the presidential election. Mr. Romney made a trip to the paper’s Santa Fund charity luncheon in November. An article in The Union Leader said that he even took a pledge envelope. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. has been known to stop by the newspaper’s offices unannounced. “He’d drop in, and he’d pull up a chair and park for a half-hour,” Mr. McQuaid said, sounding as if he had been at this game too long to be flattered anymore. “It’s, like, O.K.” Mr. Gingrich’s wooing of the paper stretched out for almost a year. He would send Mr. McQuaid the novels he has written, drop by the offices to chat about Churchill and the 1860 presidential election (Mr. Gingrich and the publisher are both American history buffs) and e-mail an occasional article. “I got Callista to autograph him a children’s book for his grandchildren,” Mr. Gingrich said of his wife at a recent campaign stop in the town of Lebanon. “And he reads my novels.” In Mr. McQuaid’s office, a cluttered table was filled with books written by presidential aspirants, all of whom either had sent them by mail or had dropped them off in person. “Read his novels?” Mr. McQuaid said of Mr. Gingrich, digging through the pile. “That would be a stretch.” People have feared and loathed The Union Leader ever since the days of the curmudgeonly William Loeb III, who bought the paper in the 1940s and bullied a generation of politicians with vitriolic front-page editorials. Mr. Loeb headlined an article about Henry A. Kissinger’s appointment as secretary of state with an anti-Semitic slur. Edmund S. Muskie became “Moscow Muskie” and a flip-flopper. Mr. Muskie destroyed his candidacy by breaking down and appearing to cry while denouncing Mr. Loeb at a news conference outside the paper’s offices. Mr. McQuaid, who has a wry sense of humor, neatly combed brown hair and a lean frame, seems committed to carrying on the paper’s legacy as a political baseball bat, albeit in an inoffensive, less cruel way. He prefers to bury you with words. Friday’s newspaper, for example, had a front-page article about Mr. Gingrich, a syndicated column titled “In Mass., Romney raised taxes, fees” and an op-ed article, “Newt Gingrich can rise to the challenge of the times,” by a New Hampshire state representative. The back page displayed a picture of Mr. Gingrich and his wife, who was proudly holding a copy of The Union Leader. “Joe McQuaid says, We don’t just endorse once; we endorse every day,” said John H. Sununu, the former New Hampshire governor, who sometimes found himself attacked when Mr. McQuaid believed his administration was not sufficiently conservative. “Once they endorse, every day after, you will not be in doubt about who they endorsed.” The newspaper has at times gone over the top in protecting Mr. Gingrich. Last month it published an anonymous quotation defending Mr. Gingrich’s tax position — which had come under fire from Mr. Sununu and other Republicans — and attributed it to a Gingrich aide. It turned out the “aide” was Mr. Gingrich himself. Mr. McQuaid, who edited the paper before he became publisher more than a decade ago, defended his newsroom and said he did not meddle in coverage. “My reporters bend over backwards to be fair,” he said. But some people object to the notion that he is hands off. “He is a very active publisher,” said Mark Hayward, a general-assignment reporter. “I don’t think he ever left the newsroom, in the emotional sense.” Though the newspaper’s weekday circulation is just over 45,000 copies, its political potency is admired even by those who have ended up on the wrong side of the publisher’s pen. The newspaper’s advocacy of Mr. Gingrich came up on Friday in a Fox News interview with Kelly A. Ayotte, the state’s freshman Republican senator. “It’s the only statewide newspaper,” Ms. Ayotte said. “It’s a conservative newspaper. I respect The Union Leader.” She also noted, “I have to say, they weighed in against me in my primary, and I still ended up winning.” The newspaper’s average in picking winners suggests that Mr. Gingrich should not start writing his victory speech just yet. Though it endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1980 and John McCain in 2008, Steve Forbes got the newspaper’s nod in 2000, and Pat Buchanan in 1992. Americans never got to see a President Pierre du Pont (endorsed in 1988) or a President Samuel Yorty (1972). “I’m only one voice,” Mr. McQuaid acknowledged, adding, “a loud voice.”

By Santina LeuciJan 9, 2012 12:46pmSarah Palin’s husband is endorsing Newt Gingrich for president, Todd Palin told ABC News today.But Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and John McCain’s 2008 Republican running mate, has yet to decide “who is best able to go up against Barack Obama,” Todd Palin said.Palin said he has not spoken to Gingrich or anyone from the former House speaker’s campaign. But he said he respects Gingrich for what he went through in the 1990s and compared that scrutiny in public life to what Sarah Palin went through during her run for the vice presidency.Todd Palin said he believes that being in the political trenches and experiencing the highs and lows helps prepare a candidate for the future and the job of president.He did not criticize any of the other candidates and said his “hat is off to everyone” in the Republican race.But Todd Palin did point to last summer, when a large portion of Gingrich’s staff resigned and the candidate was left, largely by himself, to run the campaign. Gingrich’s ability to overcome the obstacle and still move up in the polls showed his ability to campaign and survive, according to Todd Palin, who said Gingrich is not one of the typical “beltway types” and that his campaign has “burst out of the political arena and touched many Americans.”

First this: I think the Todd Palin endorsement is significant. The conservative candidates all wanted Sarah Palin's endorsement. I think this is her way of announcing that. It should have been done earlier, while he was on top, instead of the other bunglings he was up to like trashing capitalism.----------------The attacks from the right on Romney's work at Bain are misplaced; it also turns out Newt worked in the industry:

During Saturday night’s GOP primary debate in New Hampshire, Gingrich said: ”I’m not nearly as enamored of a Wall Street model where you can flip companies, you can go in and have leveraged buyouts, you can basically take out all the money, leaving behind the workers.”

Upon leaving Congress in 1999, the former Speaker joined private equity firm Forstmann Little & Co. as a member of its advisory board. Forstmann Little was one of the world’s original leveraged buyout firm.

Newt spoke at some length on this on Hannity tonight. I thought he was in fine form. I thought he nicely distinguished the creation destruction of capitalism in contrast to a specific case he mentioned from Romney's Bain Capital wherein BC put in $30M and took out $180M , , , and the company went bankrupt.

To be precise the issue is not the field of venture capital, it is how one acts. Newt is specifically accusing Mitt of having acted badly on more than one occasion. No one that I am aware of has researched this point with regard to Newt's involvement w Fortstman et al.

Speaking of Newt's past: Concerning the FMs, I caught something recently where he said he had been restrained from talking about certain things with the FMs due to a confidentiality agreement, but that he was now free to speak and would be soon. With most politicians my natural reaction would be to roll my eyes, but with Newt I remember how he let literally DECADES go by with this terrible meme ou there that he had divorced his dying wife, only for us to discover quite recently through his daughter that it wasn't true!!!! That the wife had wanted to divorce him (who could blame her ) and that she had just gotten news that she wasn't dying and that in point of fact she is still alive!!! Only when the daughter and the wife gave permission to speak, did he let it come out. In my opinion, what he did as a man here is rather remarkable-- and it is why I am willing to take a wait and see attitude when he says he has not spoken until now about the FMs due to confidentiality issues.

Political junkie that I am while I was searching for the Sunday morning debate I ran across Newt in a NH townhall meeting.

In my opinion, NONE of the candidates come close to the level that this man operates at.

He told a story of the his time with President Reagan based upon a riff of "Lions don't hunt chipmunks, they hunt zebras and antelopes" with the idea that a lion hunting chipmunks would starve-- this being a metaphor for choosing a few big themes and not sweating the smaller issues. Hard to convey with my words here, but it was very effective. As he built the theme and worked with it the audience, my son, and I sat in close attention.

Pravda on the Hudson seeks to guide us to the "proper" conclusions , , ,

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MANCHESTER, N.H. — For weeks this winter, as Newt Gingrich’s presidential hopes faltered under the weight of millions of dollars in attack ads paid for by backers of Mitt Romney, a small group of Gingrich supporters quietly lobbied for help from one of the richest men in America: Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino owner and Mr. Gingrich’s longtime friend and patron. Mr. Romney’s supporters were also calling, imploring Mr. Adelson to stay out of the race. By the time Mr. Gingrich limped into New Hampshire, some of his top backers had given up on Mr. Adelson and begun prospecting elsewhere, including among erstwhile supporters of Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, to finance a counterattack. But on Friday, the cavalry arrived: a $5 million check from Mr. Adelson to Winning Our Future, a “super PAC” that supports Mr. Gingrich. By Monday morning, the group had reserved more than $3.4 million in advertising time in South Carolina, a huge sum in a state where the airwaves come cheap and the primary is 11 days away. The group is planning to air portions of a movie critical of Mr. Romney’s time at Bain Capital, the private equity firm he helped found. The last-minute injection underscores how last year’s landmark Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance has made it possible for a wealthy individual to influence an election. Mr. Adelson’s contribution to the super PAC is 1,000 times the $5,000 he could legally give directly to Mr. Gingrich’s campaign this year. Several people with knowledge of Mr. Adelson’s decision to donate to Winning Our Future said that it was born out of a two-decade friendship with Mr. Gingrich, his advocacy on behalf of Israel and his turbulent months as a presidential candidate. “His friend needed his help,” said a close associate of both men, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid drawing Mr. Adelson’s ire. “It’s more than anything else a loyalty thing. And he believes strongly in his platform and in Newt’s candidacy.” Ron Reese, a spokesman for Mr. Adelson, declined to comment for this article. At a stop in New Hampshire on Monday, Mr. Gingrich, who complained bitterly about the wealthy Romney supporters who helped send him to a fifth-place finish in Iowa, said Mr. Adelson was operating on his own. “If he wants to counterbalance Romney’s millionaires,” Mr. Gingrich said, “I have no objection to him counterbalancing Romney’s millionaires.” But for Mr. Gingrich, the donation could be both boon and burden: Mr. Adelson comes with potential liabilities. His main source of income, casinos, could upset some social conservatives. That he operates in China could rankle isolationist voters, while some of his views on Israel are hawkish by mainstream Republican standards. Mr. Adelson’s company, Las Vegas Sands, also faces a federal investigation for possible violations of a federal antibribery law, relating to operations in the Chinese gambling district of Macau, the company acknowledged last year. The company has said the investigation stems from the allegations of a disgruntled former employee. The aid is also likely to intensify public scrutiny of Mr. Adelson, 78, who has invested millions of dollars in conservative causes over the years but prefers to keep his political activities private. The relationship between Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Adelson dates to the mid-1990s and first centered on their common animosity for labor unions. Mr. Adelson was building his newest resort casino, the Venetian, and became embroiled in a battle with a local culinary union trying to organize his employees. The conflict soured further when Mr. Adelson helped finance a campaign in Nevada to pass legislation curtailing the ability of labor unions to automatically deduct money from members to finance political activities. Aides to Mr. Adelson turned to Mr. Gingrich — known for his criticism of labor unions — for advice, said George Harris, who worked for Mr. Adelson at the time. Aides to Mr. Gingrich, then the House speaker, helped Mr. Adelson hone his antiunion pitch, and Mr. Gingrich was invited to Las Vegas to speak and be honored with a fund-raiser. Mr. Gingrich endorsed the Nevada legislation. He also backed other legislation in 1998 to preserve tax deductions beneficial to the industry. “They hit it off immediately,” Mr. Harris recalled Monday, explaining that he helped broker the introduction. “They became friends, pals, as they had a great deal in common.” Mr. Adelson became one of Mr. Gingrich’s most important patrons, donating $7 million to a political committee founded by Mr. Gingrich in 2006, American Solutions, whose direct-mail lists and advocacy of Social Security privatization and greater oil exploration were critical building blocks to Mr. Gingrich’s presidential campaign. Mr. Adelson allowed Mr. Gingrich the use of his personal aircraft, and the two occasionally met for meals and spoke often by phone, a former aide to Mr. Adelson said. Page 2 of 2) But the two shared views about much more than domestic issues. Both men have long been staunch American allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Mr. Adelson owns a free daily newspaper in Israel that is credited with helping Mr. Netanyahu return to power in 2009. In May 2010, the cover of a special section of the paper featured a full-page photograph of Mr. Gingrich in front of an American flag, with Mr. Gingrich criticizing the Obama administration for not moving more aggressively against Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “Evading the confrontation with evil may bring a second Holocaust,” Mr. Gingrich wrote in the article. “The mistakes made by the White House will exact a terrible price.” This willingness to publicly criticize American policy toward Israel — during the Bush and Obama administrations — has distinguished Mr. Gingrich from his Republican rivals, said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Israel under President George W. Bush. Those views often echoed Mr. Adelson’s. Early on, Mr. Adelson was expected to play a central role on Mr. Gingrich’s campaign, perhaps as finance chairman. But in June, the campaign seemed to implode, with the resignations of his campaign manager and a half-dozen senior advisers. Within days, though, Mr. Gingrich rebooted his campaign, speaking at a fund-raiser for the Republican Jewish Coalition, where Mr. Adelson sits on the board. In December, Becky Burkett, the former chief fund-raiser for American Solutions, formed Winning Our Future. Mr. Tyler came aboard as a senior adviser. Rumors soon floated that Mr. Adelson would give the group as much as $20 million — but were quickly denied by Mr. Adelson. In the days before the Iowa caucuses, as Mr. Gingrich’s poll numbers fell under a withering assault from Restore Our Future, a super PAC backing Mr. Romney, supporters of other Republican candidates said they urged Mr. Adelson to hold back or even endorse a different candidate People close to the men disagreed on whether Mr. Adelson always intended to support Mr. Gingrich or only came around in recent days, as his supporters came to believe that only a major infusion of money could salvage the campaign. But when Mr. Gingrich declared in a December interview that Palestinians are an “invented” people — meaning they had no historical claim to have their own state and that they remain committed to destroying Israel — it inspired a new round of enthusiasm for him among many conservative American Jews. “Not many others are willing to say that, but it is a tragic truth,” said Morton A. Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America Mr. Adelson echoed Mr. Gingrich’s comments within days in an interview with Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper. “Read the history of those who call themselves Palestinians, and you will hear why Gingrich said recently that the Palestinians are an invented people,” Mr. Adelson said. Fred Zeidman, a Texas energy executive who is another prominent Jewish political contributor and a supporter of Mr. Romney, said he was among those who called Mr. Adelson, and they talked about why he was still backing Mr. Gingrich. “As long as Newt is in the race, we are going to be with Newt,” Mr. Adelson replied, according to Mr. Zeidman, in a conversation they had in December. “We can’t abandon him now.”

By STEPHEN MOORE The buzz is getting stronger that GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich will pull back on his planned $3 million ad campaign that accuses rival Mitt Romney of "looting" companies and ruining workers' lives when he headed Bain Capital.

I'm hearing from Gingrich insiders that several top campaign brass want the former speaker of the House to withdraw the 28 minute ad -- which has been universally panned by conservative leaders in recent days. Even Mr. Gingrich himself is said to be having reservations. But other senior advisors of the Gingrich Super PAC, Winning Our Future, want to continue full speed ahead. They dismiss complaints that the ad should be withdrawn and say doing so would only help the Romney campaign.

Radio talk show host Mark Levin reported Wednesday that Mr. Gingrich will pull back the ads, but the Gingrich campaign has denied that. I've talked to several major Gingrich donors who say they are disgusted by the class-warfare tactic. Rush Limbaugh likened Newt Gingrich's attacks to Barack Obama's assaults on free-market capitalism and rich people.

Some Gingrich advisors want to change tactics and use the Super PAC money -- mostly donated by Las Vegas casino hotel owner Sheldon Adelson -- to run positive TV ads on Mr. Gingrich's economic growth ideas or to criticize Mr. Romney on issues such as healthcare and gay marriage.

Mr. Gingrich probably can't win the race for the nomination. The only question is whether he will lose with any dignity. With Mr. Gingrich, you never know whether common sense will prevail. That may explain why a campaign that looked so promising one month ago has crash landed.

I'm not seeing a problem here, but the WSJ writes as if there may be one , , ,

By BRODY MULLINS Newt Gingrich and his consulting companies helped financial-services giant Credit Suisse Group gather exclusive Washington information and analysis, showing that the Republican presidential candidate benefited from a practice that has come under fire from lawmakers.

This "political intelligence" business—while legal—also risks muddying the campaign argument by the former House speaker that he has been a Washington outsider since he left Congress in 1999.

At a June 2010 lunch, Mr. Gingrich gave Credit Suisse and its clients his take on whether Republicans would back government spending on renewable energy. That fall, Credit Suisse analysts held conference calls with a top official at Mr. Gingrich's health-care consultancy, the Center for Health Transformation, to interpret changes to health-care policy.

And on May 26, 2011, Mr. Gingrich's health-care firm organized a day of private meetings between Credit Suisse analysts and senior Republican congressional health-care policy aides. Though held a few weeks after Mr. Gingrich left to run for president, it was planned while he was running the firm.

The Credit Suisse "D.C. Day" at the K Street offices of the Center for Health Transformation featured analysis from top Senate aides. Credit Suisse stock analysts used the information gathered at these events to help make stock recommendations to the firm's investor clients.

Information in this story comes from people invited to the meetings and from Credit Suisse research reports.

R.C. Hammond, a campaign spokesman for Mr. Gingrich, defended the work by calling the Credit Suisse events a standard element of the center's business. "This is what CHT is: It's information flow and an exchange of ideas," he said. "They weren't giving them investment advice; they were giving them policy analysis." He added: "Giving an update on what's going on in Washington is information analysis at its best."

In a statement, Credit Suisse said its "research analysts regularly tap appropriate experts from a broad array of disciplines, in an effort to help investors make informed decisions."

Wall Street firms increasingly are seeking an edge by trying to figure out how pending policy changes could affect stocks. To service this desire a crop of political-intelligence firms has sprung up. Unlike lobbyists, they face no requirement to register with the government or disclose their names or clients. The firms connect investors with Washington insiders, who pass on analysis based on their experience and contacts. In some cases, firms arrange face-to-face meetings for investors with officials writing laws.

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Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich at a State Capitol rally for home ownership Thursday in Columbia, S.C..Legislation introduced by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D., N.Y.) would require companies that sell political intelligence to disclose for the first time their activities and Wall Street clients. It has been embraced by a majority of House members, up from nine in November. House Republicans say they want to approve the bill early this year. It also would bar lawmakers and congressional aides from disclosing market-moving, nonpublic information about pending or prospective legislation if they believe the information will be used in stock trades.

In the Senate, Sen. Joe Lieberman, (I., Conn.) said he wants to hold a hearing on the political-intelligence business in the next few months.

Mr. Gingrich's Center for Health Transformation signed up dozens of health-care companies who paid as much as $200,000 a year to be members, with the goal of discussing and promoting free-market solutions to health-care issues. Member companies had access to a menu of services, including a speech by Mr. Gingrich, policy papers and regular conference calls. "Platinum" members receive twice-a-year meetings with members of Congress, key congressional aides and administration officials.

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Newt Gingrich in Columbia, S.C..The Center for Health Transformation declined to say who its members are and it was unclear if Credit Suisse was among this group.

According to a membership contract viewed by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Gingrich's group "will help host, twice during our annual partnership, a delegation of portfolio managers, client company executives, etc. for a visit to Washington DC." The day "can include meeting with key thought leaders in health care, elected officials or key staff from the Hill."

For Credit Suisse, there was the added benefit of taking advantage of Mr. Gingrich's insights and connections to gain an edge in its analysis of health-care stocks. It isn't known if other Wall Street firms were members of the center.

Companies join the center "because of our vast expertise on health policy issues and concepts we forged to transform health care," said Susan Meyers, a spokeswoman for the center. "We have been a very attractive place for anyone wanting to come to learn more about how to save lives and save money."

.The May 26, 2011, event linked Credit Suisse executives with top Capitol Hill aides, including two Republicans from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and one from the Senate's tax-writing committee, which has jurisdiction over health-care policy. Others at the meetings included Charles Boorady, a top health-care analyst for Credit Suisse. The investment firm said Mr. Boorady wouldn't comment.

On June 1, Credit Suisse issued a report in Mr. Boorady's name predicting—based in part on information he cited from the "DC Day"—that managed-care companies such as UnitedHealth Group Inc. would likely benefit from a push by states and the federal government to reduce costs for Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Credit Suisse upgraded its outlook for UnitedHealth Group and raised its "target price" to $62 per share, up from $60 a share. The stock was then trading in the low $50s; it closed Thursday at $52.87 a share.

In September and October 2010, Credit Suisse analysts held two conference calls with Vincent Frakes, a top official at the Center for Health Transformation. The analysts asked Mr. Frakes for his take on how states would implement a piece of the health-care law that requires insurers to spend 80% to 85% of their revenue on medical care.

In the September conference call, Mr. Frakes said he didn't expect many states to change their insurance rules in a way that would hurt managed-care companies. He noted in a follow-up call in October that a move by a regulatory agency could make it more likely that states would ask for waivers from the rules, according to an Oct. 22 research report from Credit Suisse.

The research report said Credit Suisse's "top picks" were health insurers UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint Inc.

We will see Saturday, but Newt with his personal baggage started with one chance to win and that was be only the guy answering Juan Williams in the clip espousing the value of freedom and work ethic, national security etc. and not fall off message. Paul Gigot has good insights on this:

The Bain of Gingrich's CampaignIn last night's debate, Mr. Gingrich was shaky on the most recent theme of his campaign—Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital.

By PAUL A. GIGOT

Newt Gingrich was the star of Monday night's GOP debate in South Carolina, which isn't surprising. He's done well in all the debates. Most notable is that he was shaky on the main theme of his last week of campaigning -- Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital -- while he did best when he focused on the failures of the Obama administration and the welfare state.

The former speaker never did have a good answer for Bret Baier's queries on Bain Capital, which included critical quotes from one of the Journal's recent editorials. The Georgian lacked his usual confidence and sure-footedness. This may be because at some level Mr. Gingrich doesn't believe his own assertions that Bain practices an illegitimate form of capitalism. He said he was merely asking "questions" to see whether or not Mr. Romney "can answer them effectively." Mr. Romney wasn't much better in defending himself -- his default is always to focus on his own biography rather than the larger philosophical or moral issue -- but an attack on business doesn't play very well among GOP primary voters and it didn't in the auditorium on Monday.

Mr. Gingrich was far better on the questions of race, jobs for young people, and Social Security. One of Mr. Gingrich's debating skills is that he doesn't accept the moral premises of the (usually liberal) questioner. So he can turn a query intended to trap him into accepting the exploitation of children into an answer highlighting the dignity of work and the dangers of dependency. He can do this speaking off the cuff in a way that Mr. Romney simply cannot. The crowd in Myrtle Beach loved it, and Mr. Gingrich will probably get a bump from his performance.

His problem is that debates tend to be more consequential earlier in a campaign when impressions are being formed, and this week is late in the game. Mr. Gingrich's Bain detour was a blunder that cost him with many of the conservatives he needs to win in South Carolina.

Agreed. My sympathies for Newt are a matter of record around here, but I agree that this Bain Capital episode appears to have been not only a blunder, but also a moment of character weakness for him.

Here's a WSJ piece from today on his professor years:

By ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON

A year into his first full-time teaching job, Newt Gingrich applied to be college president, submitting with his application a paper titled "Some Projections on West Georgia College's Next Thirty Years."

Mel Steely, a history professor who played a role in Mr. Gingrich's hiring in 1970, said the bid drew "a chuckle" from administrators. The following year, Mr. Gingrich applied to be chairman of the history department. That wasn't greeted so kindly, Mr. Steely said, with some favoring a longtime professor and World War II veteran.

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University of West GeorgiaNewt Gingrich in 1973, during his time at West Georgia College.

"We weren't going to make Newt our chairman, but he liked the idea of competing for almost anything," said Mr. Steely, who later wrote a complimentary biography of Mr. Gingrich titled "The Gentleman From Georgia." "He figured 'I'm capable of doing this,' and it didn't bother him so much that it offended anybody."

Mr. Gingrich often says his experience as a historian would make him a superior president. During Monday's GOP debate, he lectured "as a historian" on "a fact-based model" for revamping Social Security, citing the success of programs in Galveston, Texas, and Chile.

Gingrich's History

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So what was Professor Gingrich actually like? A clutch of little-known records from what is now the University of West Georgia in Carrollton suggests the ambition and intellectual grandeur of Newt 2012 aren't a long way from the 1970s vintage. In addition to seeking the college presidency, Mr. Gingrich was often absent as he pursued political goals. He embarked on an effort to moonlight as a paid consultant. And, it turns out, he spent little time teaching history.

Mr. Gingrich coordinated the school's fledgling environmental-studies department and by 1976 was removed from the history department because his "interest in long-range and broad-range planning for the future...is clearly more appropriate to the orientation of our Department of Geography," a 1975 letter from then-college president Ward Pafford reads.

Gingrich campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond emphasized that Mr. Gingrich's backing in history includes a master's and doctoral degree from Tulane University and extensive research and writing on the subject. "He's talked about teaching environmental studies" at West Georgia, Mr. Hammond said.

Then as now, "There was this whole wealth of information that he was communicating in digestible bites," said J. Randolph Evans, a West Georgia student of Mr. Gingrich who was his legal counsel when he was House speaker in the 1990s and chairman of several Gingrich ventures. He described Mr. Gingrich as an engaged and energetic professor.

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More photos and interactive graphicsThe college records total more than 200 pages, but they're incomplete, university officials say, citing the file's age. Mr. Gingrich left the small liberal arts college in 1977 after seven years and after he was denied tenure.

Mr. Gingrich was recommended to West Georgia as a dynamic young academic "with a single-minded purpose in life: to become a fine teacher-scholar," wrote Charles P. Roland, then-chairman of history at Tulane University in New Orleans.

His application listed 26 books he said he'd read between August 1969 and January 1970 while writing his dissertation on educational systems in the Belgian Congo. Mr. Gingrich, his wife, Jackie, and their two daughters were living in Brussels at the time. "My reading is rather too eclectic for a specialist and my coursework was too broad to give me any depth," he wrote in a 1970 letter to W. Benjamin Kennedy, who then led West Georgia's history department. He started at an annual salary of $9,700.

After his unsuccessful bid for the president's job, college officials asked him and a colleague to draw up ideas for modernizing the institution. That led to the 1973 creation of "The Institute for Directed Change and Renewal," a platform the two men used to try to sell the institute's services to public schools.

Mr. Gingrich wrote to a college vice president asking if it was "appropriate and legal" to profit from their work. College President Pafford responded swiftly: "You are not entitled to financial compensation by any other State of Georgia agency or institution," he wrote in a memo. The institute soon went defunct.

The file contains a letter from Mr. Gingrich apologizing for his brusque treatment of Mr. Kennedy, the history head. "Occassionally [sic] a young man acting in innocence will cause trouble while pursuing what he believes to be a good cause," Mr. Gingrich wrote. A memo on the incident written by Mr. Kennedy is missing.

Mr. Gingrich threw himself into working as "a specialist in futurism," according to a 1973 college news release. "Asked why he maintains such a hectic schedule, he said he feels it is his obligation as an educator to do as much as possible to make the world a better place," the release said. In fact, Mr. Gingrich was pursuing a long-shot bid for Congress, running as the 6th District's lone Republican in the shadow of Watergate.

A December 1973 news story by Howell Raines, then of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, noted Mr. Gingrich was making "four or more speeches a week," while "carefully retaining the unofficial status of his candidacy." It was against the rules of the university system for serving professors to campaign for office.

Mr. Gingrich later went on unpaid leave to pursue his campaign, billing himself as a reformer, as he had at West Georgia College. He lost, but tried twice more, each time taking unpaid leave. After leaving the college for good, he won his House seat in 1978.

The impostor who wallowed in negative ads, attacked capitalism at Bain Capital andhemmed and hawed when asked about his role at Freddie Mac is gone. The real NewtGingrich has returned!

The former Speaker was in his element during Monday night's GOP debate in SouthCarolina. Inspired and egged on by a conservative crowd and appealing to a nationalTV audience, he put red meat before the voters. Rick Santorum, by contrast, servedonly white-meat chicken. (It was a GOP debate, so nobody served pork.)

When Newt spoke about the importance of a work ethic and criticized Fox News's JuanWilliams for implying that being a janitor was demeaning for young people, he gavevent to the frustrations of millions of Americans chafing under the restraints ofpolitical correctness.

And when he savaged Ron Paul for comparing Osama bin Laden to a Chinese dissidentseeking asylum in the United States, he articulated what we all felt -- revulsion atPaul's modern-day impersonation of Neville Chamberlain cowering in the face ofHitler.

Newt is back!

With biweekly debates, these national contests -- far more than local campaigningand even paid advertising -- will shape the outcome of the early primaries.Especially in a state the size of South Carolina, where media is not that costly, soeveryone can afford their share, the debates will be the difference.

Santorum's performance was workmanlike, statistical, detailed and lawyerly. He laidout his points well and even baited a trap for Romney over his failure to urge therepeal of a Massachusetts law permitting felons to vote, even while incarcerated.But the difference between Santorum and Gingrich was on vivid display on Mondaynight: passion versus carefully articulated positions.

Just as important for Newt was the destruction of Ron Paul. His quibbling over howwe should have handled bin Laden and the candidate's obviously self-destructiveisolationism should reduce even further his vote share in a defense-oriented statelike South Carolina. If Newt can open up a separation in vote share vis-ŕ-vis Pauland Santorum (and Perry recognizes reality and bows out) then Newt has Mitt where hewants him -- one on one.

Romney's debate performance was subpar. He handled the income tax return questionpoorly. Everybody realizes that releasing your returns in April won't help primaryvoters decide for whom they should vote in January. Most likely, Mitt's return willshow that he paid the capital gains rate -- 15 percent -- on his income, which ishis legal right, but which will open him up for criticism. But Romney has to realizethat he needs to take the heat and release them sooner rather than later. IfGingrich releases his returns before South Carolina, you can bet he will forceRomney to fess up before Florida.

Mitt also needs to do a better job of defending Bain Capital. This is not atax-supported or philanthropic institution. Bain got private investors to bail outfailing companies. To do that, and to take those kinds of risks, you need to offermonster returns. That Bain was able to produce, attract capital and turn around somany companies is very, very admirable. And Romney needs to start addressing it inthose terms. Are his critics confident that he would have gotten the capital to tryto turn these companies around if he offered a lower return? On what basis do theythink so?

Newt only hurts himself by going negative. He looks bad doing it and it brings outthe worst in his image. It makes one wonder if he is staying in the race out ofanger and a need for revenge. But when he articulates his positive vision, werealize what a patriot he really is.

Newt won the debate Monday night - it wasn't even close. Then Sarah Palin told SeanHannity last night on Fox that she'd vote for Newt if she had a vote in SouthCarolina. And just this morning, a new Rasmussen poll showed Newt within threepoints of Mitt Romney!

Please watch this video and you'll see why we have so much momentum right now:

"Arguably he has matured since 15 years ago-- in part due to his being brought low, in part due to his time in the wilderness, in part due to the natural passage of time."

Yes, but... He counts the accomplishments but refuses to take the negatives from the same time period. The ex-wife story is old news. I believe we had the Vanity Fair story here a year ago. I was only judging him by his word to prove his new discipline by showing it in the campaign.

It looks as if standing ovations at political debates are now the norm. Newt Gingrich got another one last night, after his answer to the opening question from CNN's John King, which concerned what the Drudge Report had hyped as ABC-TV's "bombshell" interview with the ex-speaker's ex-wife Marianne.

CNN.com quotes the response: " 'To take an ex-wife and make it two days before the primary a significant question in a presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine,' Gingrich told King, the moderator of the debate." The story notes that "Gingrich's response elicited loud applause from the audience" but it doesn't mention the standing ovation, perhaps because such a thing is no longer newsworthy, more likely because it was at the expense of the network's host.

The interview aired on "Nightline" some 90 minutes after the debate ended, and the bombshell turned out to be a dud. The supposed big revelation--that "he wanted an open marriage," as she, not he, put it--turned out in context to be trivial.

As Mrs. Gingrich told the story, the then-speaker informed her over the phone that he wanted a divorce. "I said to him, 'Newt, we've been married a long time.' And he said, 'Yes. But you want me all to yourself. Callista doesn't care what I do.' "

"What was he saying to you, do you think?" asked interviewer Brian Ross.

Mrs. Gingrich: "Oh, he was asking to have an open marriage and I refused."

By her account, he first asked for a divorce. She protested, and he made clear that he was unwilling to give up his then-mistress. It's unclear from Marianne Gingrich's account whether Mr. Gingrich actually offered to remain married in exchange for tolerance of his infidelity, or if this was merely her inference.

In either case, there is an enormous difference between offering such an arrangement as a "compromise" to a spouse who does not wish to divorce, which is what Mr. Gingrich appears to have done, and flat-out asking for an open marriage. Neither reflects well on him, but the former is within the normal range of cruel and confused behavior during a breakup, whereas the latter is, at least by American standards, deviant.

There is also evidence that the Gingriches' marriage had been troubled for years before the split. National Review's Robert Costa notes a 1999 Associated Press report on their separation, which revealed some background:

Documents related to the divorce filed Friday in Cobb County Superior Court include a separation agreement signed by the couple and notarized in December 1987. There is no indication it was ever filed.

Browning said Marianne Gingrich called her husband on his birthday in June 1987 to tell him she was leaving him. Gingrich, he said, came back to Georgia to find his home emptied out.

Browning said the pair maintained separate residences for six years before reconciling in late 1993 or early 1994.

There's no way to know who was at fault in the first separation, and while it is not in dispute that Mr. Gingrich committed adultery before the actual divorce, the 1987 story leads one to wonder if he was completely to blame for the ultimate breakup.

Which brings us to the public-policy implication of the Gingrich divorce story. Mr. Gingrich might have been morally blameworthy in the breakup of his marriage, but at the time almost every state had a no-fault divorce regime. Today every state does. Mr. Gingrich was acting in accord with a legal regime that favors the spouse who wishes to divorce and gives no weight to the other's objections. Mrs. Gingrich's position would have been stronger, giving Mr. Gingrich an incentive to be more respectful, under the old fault-based divorce system.

Here is a point of commonality between Mr. Gingrich and his political contemporary, Bill Clinton: Both of their personal-political scandals arose out of relatively recent changes in the law. As we noted in a 1998 Wall Street Journal essay, the discovery process that led to the revelation of Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky was normal for a sexual harassment lawsuit. Yet Clinton's defenders, while complaining bitterly about how intrusive that process was, never questioned whether harassment law in general had gone too far.

Likewise, we don't expect the spotlight on Gingrich's marital woes to lead to a debate over the wisdom of no-fault divorce. Like the sexual harassment tort, it is firmly entrenched in our culture. Women initiate a large majority of both divorces and harassment lawsuits, so put this down to the power of feminism.

The conventional wisdom is Newt can beat Obama in any debates. Suppose he is the nominee and Obama simply ducks the debates?

After all said and done at this time I prefer Romney as the "safer" candidate. Newt seems just too risky. On this count I agree with Coulter about Newt. I don't agree with her assertion he would absolutely lose against Obama. Yet the "insiders" must be doing studies of this and what they find is telling them independents don't/won't like Newt.

I guess the question is how will Newt do with the independents? My understanding is Romney is more popular with them.The conservatives seem convinced that all they need is a great voice in the darkness to convince the independents that their contrasting vision for America is the best choice and all the independents will have some sort of awakening and vote for a Republican. I am not so sure.

Surely if Wesbury is right and the stock market is up 20% this year (despite the debt +/- unemployment) independents might very well go for Brock. He is very intent on buying their votes ("it is all about the middle class").